OSE shows 118 FB shares but we show more, whats wrong here?

[Mike-Dream]

I ran www.lauriloewenberg.com/ in OSE and it shows 118 Facebook shares while we see more than that. Maybe we are doing something wrong or a setting isn't correct, I'm not sure. The site was created in WordPress.

Here are 3 posts that add up to 224 shares:

Post 1 114 shares

Post 2 64 shares

Post 3 46 shares

I'm sure there are some people that are sharing multiple posts, Will that make a difference? Even if that was true the number still seems very low.

Thanks

[Mike-Dream]

Dan,

Thanks for the clarification. I will seek out a plugin today that will get us the proper tags.

Mike

[evolvingSEO]

Dan says I need the FB API which I looked at and it seemed confusing

Hi, in the first answer above I said: "you need to install the facebook open graph meta tags" - this is different from the API.  You do not need to use the API for anything. OSE uses the API for their data.

More info on open graph tags here, on the like button page

Open graph tags are meta tags you insert into the of your website on every page, so that when someone uses your share/like buttons, it sends information about your website over to Facebook, thus "counting" it as a share.

Do I need to install or connect properly with the FB API or just expect a discrepancy between what my site shows and OSE reports?

To reiterate, the action you need to take is to add the open graph tags to the of your website. You are running on WordPress so I suggest looking for a plugin that will do this for you.

Hope that helps! I know, it was a little confusing when I first tried to wrap my head around it.

To quote from facebook:

"The Open Graph Protocol enables you to integrate your Web pages into the social graph. It is currently designed for Web pages representing profiles of real-world things — things like movies, sports teams, celebrities, and restaurants. Including Open Graph tags on your Web page, makes your page equivalent to a Facebook Page. This means when a user clicks a Like button on your page, a connection is made between your page and the user. Your page will appear in the "Likes and Interests" section of the user's profile"

-Dan

[Mike-Dream]

Jennifer,

I have read this post and the one you referenced above but I'm still confused...

Dan stated: OSE is showing shares of your homepage (118 shares / 57 likes) - you need to enter each individual page URL to get shares/likes for that page. Running your first page "Post 1" URL in OSE shows 35 shares / 13 likes.

I understand that you have to run each page/post.

Our Post 1 shows 113 FB shares, is this because I am not communicating with FB correctly? Dan days I need the FB API which I looked at and it seemed confusing .

The post you directed me to seems to be saying that likes, comments and shares are all added together but that still doesn't add up, we have no comments on Post 1 and show 113 FB shares.

Bottom line, do I need to install or connect properly with the FB API or just expect a discrepancy between what my site shows and OSE reports?

Thanks

(I noticed this question is now marked "answered" is that because you did the Staff endorsement? I know I didn't mark it answered yet because i still wasn't clear)

[jennita]

Dan is correct, the social data is not related to the Linkscape crawl at all. It is pulled directly from the APIs of Twitter and Facebook.

[evolvingSEO]

From what I know, they are getting that data straight from the facebook API, which is always current. This is totally different from when they update their linkscape index which provides the link data.

-Dan

[evolvingSEO]

OSE is showing shares of your homepage (118 shares / 57 likes) - you need to enter each individual page URL to get shares/likes for that page. Running your first page "Post 1" URL in OSE shows 35 shares / 13 likes.

However, more importantly, its good to know what actually counts as a "share". To capture the most from the actual "share" buttons on your site, you need to install the facebook open graph meta tags on your site. This treats your site "like a facebook page" and will thus count of of the shares from people clicking the share button.

Hope that helps!

-Dan

[Mike-Dream]

Thanks Joseph,

Don't know if that would cover it since we have been gathering Shares for months on this site.

Thanks for the link!

Mike

[Jolora]

If FB shares updated with the rest of linkscape then it may just be that you have had more shares since the latest update. I'm sure somebody from SEOmoz will confirm if this is true or not. You can see the update schedule here: http://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule